JOHN PAUL II MEETS WALDHEIM AGAIN

By SERGE SCHMEMANN, Special to the New York Times

Published: June 24, 1988

VIENNA, June 23—
Pope John Paul II arrived here today for a five-day visit intended to encourage Roman Catholics in Austria and neighboring Eastern European countries, but burdened by the controversy around President Kurt Waldheim and a dispute in the Austrian church.

As head of state, Mr. Waldheim greeted the Pope at the airport and was with or near him through most of his first day's schedule, which included a private meeting with the President's family and about 15 minutes of private conversation at the Hofburg Palace, the official seat of the President.

While the Pope seemed cordial to Mr. Waldheim and posed with his family for television, in public John Paul made no personal comments to Mr. Waldheim and addressed him only in his official capacity as President. Neither man made any public reference to the controversy raised by the Austrian President's official visit to the Vatican last June.

Until then, Mr. Waldheim, a former United Nations Secretary General, had been snubbed by major Western leaders over revelations that he had served in a brutal German Army unit in the Balkans during World War II and had concealed the fact throughout his public career. His reception in the Vatican was sharply criticized by Jewish groups. Austria Cast as a Victim

The Pope avoided the scrutiny prompted by the Waldheim affair and by the 50th anniversary of Austria's annexation by Germany. The Austrians' record as victims of the Nazis and enthusiastic collaborators with them is a record shared by the Austrian church. But the Pope cast Austria and its Catholics primarily as victims.

''In this year of 1988, I should like to particularly recall the great trials and cruel tyranny that Austria, along with other nations, had to suffer in the not-too-distant past,'' the Pope said in an address to politicians and diplomats at the Hofburg Palace. ''Among the many who were persecuted for religious, racial and political reasons were large numbers of Catholics - priests, members of religious orders and lay people.''

The Pope also made no reference to the dispute in the Austrian church over his surprise appointment in 1986 of a sternly conservative monk, Hans Hermann Groer, as Archbishop of Vienna, and his subsequent consecration of two more conservatives as bishops. The moves have dismayed many moderate and liberal church members.

But the crowds gathered at the Pope's stops despite occasional drizzles were mostly curious and friendly, waving and smiling when he passed in his bulletproof ''Popemobile.''

Efforts by critics of the Pope to organize protests drew marginal support. A demonstration scheduled by the New Austria Movement, which drew thousands of protesters against the President during the peak of the Waldheim affair in March, attracted only about three dozen today.

During evening services in the Cathedral of St. Stephen attended by the Pope and Mr. Waldheim, about a dozen American and French Jews led by Rabbi Avi Weiss of the Bronx and Beate Klarsfeld, the Paris-based Nazi hunter, unfurled banners from hotel windows facing the cathedral square and chanted, ''No meeting with Nazi Waldheim.'' The main reaction from the crowd below, which watched the service on a large video screen, was shouts of ''Quiet!''

Viennese residents said the generally respectful reception reflected widespread deference to the Pope, and the fact that he had visited Vienna as recently as 1983, eroding the novelty of a papal visit.

The meetings with Mr. Waldheim were generally accepted by most Austrians, even those critical of the President, as protocol that the Pope could not avoid, even if he wanted to.

The Pope is scheduled to meet Friday with prominent Austrian Jews and to visit the site of the concentration camp at Mauthausen.

Paul Grosz, head of the Viennese Jewish population, said he accepted the Pope's meetings with Mr. Waldheim as pure protocol and had no intention of raising them with John Paul. Tiring of Waldheim Affair

Several Austrians said the country had evidently tired of the Waldheim affair after the intensity of the debate in March, when the country marked the 50th anniversary of its annexation by Germany and a commission of historians accused Mr. Waldheim of concealing his past but said he was not guilty of war crimes.

In his comments and prayers today, the Pope set a predominantly spiritual tone, reflecting the fact that his visit to this overwhelmingly Catholic land is primarily pastoral. But he sought to send a message of encouragement to Catholics in neighboring Eastern European countries.

About 60,000 Hungarians are expected to cross into Austria on Friday to attend a papal Mass on an airfield near the southern city of Eisenstadt, and another Mass is scheduled Saturday near the border with Yugoslavia.

The Pope has visited only his native Poland among the Communist-ruled lands.